FBI Chicago teletypes and Bureau memorandum, April 13-19, 1944: the rumored kidnapping of Jack Guzik (Vault Jake Guzik)

A Chicago teletype of April 13, 1944 (p. 8) reports that Chicago newspapers that evening carried a story that “JACK GUZIK, GAMBLING BOSS AND FROMER [sic] CAPONE BUSINESS MANAGER, WAS KIDNAPED” that morning near Ogden and Harlem Avenues, shortly after being discharged in court following a routine pickup for questioning by the Cook County Highway Police. The report came from a caller who gave a name and no address. The teletype says the Chicago and highway police had failed to confirm it, and asks to be told if the rumor proved true.

A second teletype says that on the evening of April 14 an attorney reported a telephone call from Guzik saying he was safe, unharmed, not kidnapped, and “remaining in hiding” because he did not want to be questioned. The Bureau conducted no investigation. A Bureau memorandum records the instruction to the Chicago agent in charge that it was “thought best to stay in the background,” in view of the character of the man said to have been kidnapped.

“Gambling boss” and “former Capone business manager” are the newspapers’ words as the teletype repeats them. The memorandum’s date line is garbled; it is placed in April 1944 by the teletype date stamps around it. The attorney’s name is garbled in the OCR and is not recorded. The file page quotes the first teletype; this page adds the follow-up teletype and memorandum. This archive read the page through the Vault viewer’s OCR text layer. The scans are poor; names, dates and figures can be garbled, and many names are redacted under FOIA exemptions (b6, b7C, b7D).